This guy is pretty much the core of any
successful infect deck. The +1/+1 bonus is
obviously a boon, perhaps even more so when you
consider that infect creatures only need to deal
10 damage to win the game instead of 20. And
being able to directly give poison counters
whenever you cast an infect creature means that
even if a player can always block every single
creature of yours, once Hand of the Praetors
hits play, you don't even have to attack to
spread your poison-- just keep casting creature
spells. The Hand's ability will trigger even if
the creature is countered, and your opponent
will have no way of stopping his poison count
from getting dangerously high.
Our reviews this week are inspired by the "Phyrexian
Poison" intro pack, which brings a very old
Magic mechanic back into the modern era (kind of
like Time Spiral!). In its modern incarnation,
poison is a very aggressive and dangerous
ability, and is quite hard to answer with the
current card pool. Hand of the Praetors
exemplifies everything you have to watch out for
- boosting the power of creatures with infect is
even more dangerous than for normal creatures,
and as long as this zombie is on the table,
every creature with infect that follows him acts
as Shock. The only thing I have to mark him down
for is that they couldn't find a way to make him
interact with one of my favorite Alliances cards
- the mighty Swamp Mosquito. But that is a minor
problem compared to his effectiveness in any
modern infect-based deck.
Today's card of the day is Hand of the Praetors
which is a four mana 3/2 lord for the Infect
mechanic that gives all other creatures with
Infect
+1/+1. Also, like the previous Ally
mechanic gives a target player a
poison counter whenever you cast a creature with
Infect. Four mana is a bit expensive for a
lord especially in the current environment
promoting either speed or planeswalker lockdown,
but Hand can offer a way around that if your
creatures aren't countered. Adding a clock
without even attacking and even ignoring their
life total is a very nice addition to the deck
as often an early hit can get a large number of
poison counters on the opponent before Hand is
played to finish up. A Black/Green deck
may use some acceleration to get this out before
the fourth turn and it can race pretty
effectively. Being a zombie opens up some
doors as well making it a support type with
unique options in more Black oriented designs.
Overall this is a surprisingly effective card
that works as as a keystone to any dedicated
Infect deck.
For Limited if you open enough Infect and
Proliferate cards and have this in Sealed you
probably want to play Black/Green/Artifact
unless your other colors make a really amazing
counter-argument. The single Black in the
casting cost is very easy to work with and
allows half of the deck to focus on Proliferate
or Infect options from Blue or Green
respectively and the related artifacts.
For Booster this is a strong enough card to risk
picking first and try to aggressively draft
support and power boosting effects for the
Infect mechanic. An effective and
dangerous card as part of an overall design, but
one that really needs other cards or it is just
a four mana 3/2 Infect.
